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I did some sleuthing over the weekend and found an interesting development in filmmaker Mel Brooks' views on criticism. At first, in The Critic (1962), which I've explored previously, Brooks envisioned the critic as an everyman, sticking it to elitist pretension with an unwavering honesty few else were brave enough to muster.

Not two decades later, it seems that the film critics of Brooks' day had eventually gotten to his head. In his film, The History of the World Part I (1981), Brooks portrayed the proverbial critic as a brazen misanthrope, indeed as a nihilist seeking only destruction. The critic was no longer engaged in any sort of aesthetic inquiry or search for meaning–instead, he was portrayed as but a savage ape among civilized men.